Product overview
One platform, 16 domains, one bus
Nautilus is a cloud-native, event-driven Shipboard Property Management System organized as 16 bounded domains, each an independently deployable microservice with its own data store. Every domain publishes events to a shared bus; every domain (and every AI agent) can subscribe to events from any other domain. No shared schemas. No god-database.
The bus is NATS JetStream with Quanta's agent contract layered on top. AI is a first-class participant, not a separate system. Ship-to-shore sync uses NATS leaf-node replication with guaranteed delivery and replay on reconnect — not batch jobs.
Diagram: 16 domains as event publishers / subscribers on the Quanta bus, with the ship cluster (K3s) and shore cluster (RKE2) connected via NATS leaf-node replication.
The 16 domains at a glance
| # | Domain | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Identity & Guest Profile | Universal guest record across every domain. Loyalty, preferences, dietary, accessibility. Relationship graph + voyage journal. Verified-only social. |
| 2 | Reservation & Check-in | CRS integration (Versonix Seaware first). Pre-cruise online check-in. Pier offline check-in. Cabin assignment. Board-card issuance. |
| 3 | Onboard Accounts & Billing | Real-time guest folio. Multi-currency. Packages. Vendor-agnostic payment-processor adapter (Stripe / Adyen). Embark-authorization → end-of-cruise capture. |
| 4 | Point of Sale | Browser PWA on terminal / tablet / phone / iTV / kiosk. Offline queue. KDS. Allergen surfacing. Voice ordering via CallCraft. |
| 5 | Gangway & Access Control | Real-time embark / disembark. RFID / NFC / QR. Offline mode. Manning rules. SOLAS + ENOAD reporting. Heimdall anomaly detection. |
| 6 | Safety & Muster | Mobile mustering with crew tablets. Fully offline. Fire drills. Medical module. STCW tracking. AI-guided announcements. |
| 7 | Dining & Restaurant | Reservations, floor plans, allergens, recipe management, cover forecasting, waiter tablets, signage live-feed. |
| 8 | Shore Excursions & Activities | Catalog + inventory + waitlists. Pre-cruise + onboard booking. AI recommendations. Voice booking. Manifests. Vendor management. |
| 9 | Spa & Wellness | Resource-aware booking (room + therapist + equipment). Wellness profile. Treatment history. |
| 10 | Crew, HR & Payroll | Maritime payroll. ILO working-hours monitoring. STCW + certification expiry. eLearning. Crew app. |
| 11 | Materials & Supply Chain | Real-time inventory from POS posting. AI demand forecasting. EOQ. Fleet-wide spend visibility. Waste tracking. |
| 12 | Fleet Management & HQ Intelligence | Live fleet KPIs (occupancy, RevPax, ancillary spend) via event-stream sync — not batch. Centralized config push. Regulatory dashboards. |
| 13 | Quanta AI Services | 24/7 multilingual concierge. Recommendations. Predictive spend. Anomaly detection. Voice-first service requests. |
| 14 | Unified Communications | Full ConnectOne Cloud PBX, maritime-extended. CrewApp + GuestApp. Omnichannel federation. CallCraft AI-voice. |
| 15 | Mobile, Cabin TV & Digital Signage | One React PWA codebase rendered on phone / kiosk / iTV / signage. Cabin GRMS controller. Fleet-wide live signage. |
| 16 | Telehealth & Location Intelligence | Telehealth video. BLE wearables. Anonymized contact tracing. Occupancy heatmaps for safety + revenue intelligence. |
What unites the domains
Single guest identity
Every domain — folio, POS, gangway, muster, dining, spa, telehealth — resolves to the same guest record. Board card (RFID / NFC), mobile app, cabin iTV, and crew quick-call shortcuts all point at one identity. No siloed per-module guest data; no reconciliation jobs at end of cruise.
Event-driven by construction
Every state change a domain cares about becomes an event on the bus. That means:
- AI agents see operational reality without per-domain integrations.
- The HQ fleet dashboard is live, not batch.
- The cabin TV menu reflects a Domain 7 menu change within seconds.
- Signage across the ship updates the moment a venue's wait time changes.
- Heimdall sees content the moment it's posted, not on a polling interval.
Offline-first
Every onboard service must function autonomously when VSAT or Starlink is degraded. Local event store buffers; on reconnect, events replay shore-bound with guaranteed delivery. POS keeps taking orders. Gangway keeps clearing guests. Muster keeps tracking attendance. Folio keeps posting. The bus reconciles when the link returns.
Hybrid cloud topology
Shore office on public cloud (OCI / AWS / Azure) running RKE2. Each vessel runs a local K3s private cloud — the same pattern in production at NT Connect on Harvester HCI. PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG operator) per service, on both sides. Identical Kong Gateway deployment shore and onboard. No special-cases.
Device-independent frontends
POS, kiosk, cabin iTV, mobile, and signage are the same React PWA codebase rendered on different form factors. No Oracle MICROS-style hardware lock-in. Replace a terminal with a different vendor's hardware and the software doesn't notice.
Privacy by design
Per-tenant region pinning. GDPR-grade controls everywhere as the global baseline regardless of tenant jurisdiction. Crypto-erasure for non-deletable stores. DSR APIs (access / rectify / erase / port / restrict / object) as first-class endpoints on Domain 1. DPIA per tenant at onboarding. No secondary use of operational data without explicit renewed consent.
What's available when
Nautilus is being delivered in 6 phases over 24 months. Phase 1 lays the foundation; Phase 6 brings fleet-wide rollout and 5,000+ pax tuning. We are honest about phasing — Phase 4 features are not shipping today.
Where to go next
- 16 domains in detail → — feature-by-feature per domain.
- Architecture → — Quanta bus, three-tier integration model, vessel topology.
- Tech stack → — what we picked and why.
- Roadmap → — phase-by-phase delivery.